Mahendra Singh Dhoni celebrates Andrew Flintoff's dismissal on the third day of the second Test Photograph: STRINGER/INDIA/REUTERS

You cannot pigeonhole Mahendra Singh Dhoni. He is the six-hitting entertainer who can also knuckle down and save a Test match, as he did at Lord's in 2007. He is the darling of India's Twenty20 generation, a maverick and aggressive captain in all forms of the game. But when he needs to he can also employ 8-1 and 7-2 fields, choking the runs and life out of a game.

Against Australia in Nagpur in November, India bowled 85.4 overs in a day and conceded only 166 runs. For significant stretches of that day, Zaheer Khan and Ishant Sharma bowled with only mid-on on the leg side. They reverse-swung the ball and pitched it wide of off stump, and Australia, who had romped to 189 for two from 49 overs the previous evening, were reduced to strokelessness. The resulting frustration was so overwhelming that Simon Katich snapped at a reporter who asked whether Australia had been too negative.

Yesterday against England, Dhoni, with 453 runs on the board, opted to attack. But the joy of two quick wickets with the new ball was quickly tempered by the breakneck speed at which England scored. Soon after tea, with Kevin Pietersen and Andrew Flintoff striking the ball with imperious assurance, the scoreboard showed 221 for four from 50 overs. That was the cue for Dhoni to reach for the Nagpur play manual. Zaheer Khan was asked to slant the ball well wide of the right-handers' off stump and Amit Mishra, who had earlier dismissed Paul Collingwood with a classical leg-spinner, was requested to go round the wicket and turn the ball out of the leg-stump rough.

It was not pretty to watch, but it was not illegal either. It also had the desired effect. In the next 21 overs England made 59, with Pietersen trying to switch-hit Mishra periodically in an attempt to force the pace. Then, to vindicate Dhoni even further, two wickets fell in the final 12 balls, the two they most wanted. But even the strangulation tactics did not get Pietersen quite as animated as had the choice of Yuvraj Singh to bowl the third over, with England reeling at two for two.

Pietersen disparaged Yuvraj as a "pie-chucker" but Dhoni's unorthodox methods had the support of India's coach, Gary Kirsten. "Trust MS [Dhoni] to come up with something unique," he said with a smile. "Sometimes some bowlers do get you out a couple of times. I thought it was a nice bit of thinking.

"He [Pietersen] may call him a pie-chucker but Yuvi has got him out a couple of times. He is an interesting bowler. One can now see in international cricket how the slider has become an important delivery. It often hits you on the line."

On a day when he dominated every other bowler Pietersen could not get Yuvraj away, scoring only three from the 17 balls he faced. And with India still enjoying a 171-run lead, Kirsten insisted they would push for a result.

"Being one up, we can play into a situation where we make sure that we are in a strong position," said the coach. "We would like to play winning cricket. The two late wickets were significant for us. Both of them were playing unbelievably well and it was one of Pietersen's greatest Test centuries."

Dhoni's tactics will come in for lots of scrutiny but, as the old pros will tell you, players miss no opportunity to tread the fine line between the unsportsmanlike and the tactically astute. "It's about winning the game," Dhoni said in Nagpur. "There have been strategies that have not been liked by opposition captains. But the thing that you want to do is to go out there and look to win games."